To My Daughter

When you grow up in a family of runners, you become one.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

But nobody tells you how hard it is when you’re small — how your lungs decide, somewhere around the middle, that they’ve had enough of you.

Grade five. The Brookswood loop with my dad. That long back stretch where the houses thin out and you can see how much is left, which is the worst thing a road can do to a child.

He never pushed me. He never once got upset. He only ever told me to picture it — everyone I knew, lined up along our driveway, waiting. Friends from school. Cheering. A finish line made out of people.

So I ran at something instead of away from something. And I got there, every time, to an empty driveway and a father who knew exactly what he’d done.

It worked. I became a runner.

Now it’s my daughter’s turn.

And I don’t know what to say. Push too hard and I’ll teach her to resent it — the sport, the road, the mountain, and maybe me… Push too little and she learns to go through the motions, oblivious to her athletic potential.

My dad found the third thing. He didn’t give me discipline. He gave me a crowd that wasn’t there, and let me run toward it until I didn’t need it anymore.

I don’t know if I can do that. He made it look so easy.

But here’s what I do know.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

And I’m a big fucking tree.